Confidential documents obtained last week by PressProgress revealed the Manning Centre, a right-wing think tank founded by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, is seeking half a million dollars to create a special “playbook” to “reconceptualize” social conservative issues so they sound less divisive to Millennials.

It sounds like Kenney’s Conservatives hit the ground running in Red Deer.

Here are a few dog whistles the UCP leader had on display at the Manning Centre’s Networking Conference in Red Deer this weekend:

Dog whistle #1: Cutting public services or modernizing public services?

What Jason Kenney said:

“… the NDP will have left behind to us an enormous challenge that will require a modernization of our public services, that will require us moving beyond just repeating some of the stale and rigid cliches that have too long trapped us from reforming critical public services in the past. We will have to, of course, demonstrate the courage to be fiscally responsible …

“There’s a Latin phrase that became popular in the 1700s: ‘vox populi, vox dei’. And it translates to: ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’. And folks, it takes a tremendous amount of arrogance to think that we can win an argument with God, yet that’s exactly what we see the NDP doing each and every time that it implements a policy without the popular support of the people of Alberta.”

“… The reason why you’re gathered here to talk about our future now is because that idea of Alberta has been put at risk by an ideological government that believes that politics proceeds everything, they believe that the state is almost always the answer. They seek to politicize everything and they are informed by a failed ideology based on resentment, based on a distorted view that politicians and bureaucrats through the exercise of state power can do better than local communities, individuals and strong families … I’m ambitious not just to defeat the NDP and elect a Conservative government, but to drive those socialist ideas out of the Legislature, to have a Legislature that reflects the mainstream values and commonsense values of this province.”

What Jason Kenney really means:

Borrowing a few red scare tactics from the 1950s, Kenney seems to think Alberta has been invaded by foreign ideas (“socialist ideas,” that is) that are creeping into all areas of everyday life and so they need to be purged from the province to restore the old way of life.

A conservative think tank sought half a million dollars from wealthy donors to bankroll a secret project aimed at targeting Millennials and influencing the outcome of Alberta’s 2019 provincial election.

Leaked papers newly obtained by PressProgress show the Manning Centre requested $500,000 to “increase support among Millennials for conservative values, policies and candidates.”

The leaked papers suggest the Manning Centre is planning to share its research and messaging strategies with “influential conservative leaders, including the conservative leadership provincially in Alberta and federally.”